Topic: Some Tips on Digital Photography for RVers
Presenter: Roy Boorman
A key digital picture taking tip: Hold the shutter half way down for a half second or so to "autofocus" before taking the picture.
There are primary scene "modes" built into most digital cameras to optimize settings under different conditions:
Landscape mode -- sets up for depth of field by closing lens as much as possible
Portrait mode -- opens lens as wide as possible, and minimizes depth of field
Macro focus mode -- autofocus as close as camera can do it
In addition, other modes are found on some newer digital cameras
Sports mode -- fastest shutter speed and continuous focusing mode
Party Indoors mode -- turns flash on, and maximizes depth of field
Beach and Snow mode -- best for very bright conditions
Sunset/Sunrise mode -- balances bright light with dark areas
Copy mode -- turns picture into black and white
Backlight mode -- turns on flash
Panorama mode -- sometimes called "stitch assist"
Digital telephoto (as opposed to optical telephoto) simply takes the center part of the picture and blows it up to fill the full frame. You lose resolution. Optical telephoto is "real" telephoto, and you do not lose resolution. Converter lenses can achieve wide angle or telephoto improvements with some slight loss of resolution.
Digital cameras suffer higher than normal from "red eye" effects, though that's fairly easy to eliminate with Photoshop.
Unlike film cameras, incandescent lighting is sensed by digital cameras. This is an "auto white balance". Again, can also be adjusted in Photoshop.
Pixel size is resolution, quality is compression. Megapixals, usually 2, 3, 4 or 5. That's what you paid for. If you're interested in captureing the best quality pictures, always use the highest resolution supported by your camera. Some offer 2048 by 1750; it may also have 1600 x 1200; or 640 x 480, the laater of which is less than 1 megapixel.
Quality -- all cameras save their images in JPEG, because it offers the best compression. Compression is "throwing out" pixels -- theoretically those that are least needed and can be deleted without harming resolution.
Photoshop Elements is the only software you'll need to manipulate your digital images. Don't need full version of Photoshop for digital image processing (though it offers some additional bells and whistles).
Problem finding pictures on your computer? Windows has a problem, but Mac does not because it comes with an Apple program called iPhoto that does this automatically. In all versions of Windows you can right click the "start" icon, and open Explorer. Go to "my computer"; then to your hard drive. Create a folder there and put all your pictures in that folder. Create subfolders for each trip; and further subfolders for each day of the trip, if you're into serious photography.
Why do a "format" rather than "erase" the pictures once you've downloaded the images to your computer? When you erase the pictures in the camera, you don't erase the index information to the picture. The index file is a finite, and takes space. If you "format" the camera's memory card, it overwrites the entire memory card in such a way that all the space is now available again. Since the picture itself wasn't physically erased, it's actually still there until it's overwritten -- and may be recovered if a mistake was made.
When you edit an image in Photoshop, don't EVER save it as the "original", thereby overwriting the original image. Give it a new name. Down the road you'll be better off. The software will be better, the printers will be better, and you'll be able to do much more in the future with your original picture.
Rrecommends use of CD-R ONLY, not CD-RW. CD-R burns permanently, and cannot be altered. You can add to CD-R to take advantage of unused space...but you cannot accidentally overwrite a picture you want to keep.
First step is always to "crop" to the size you want. For internet, 4" by 6" and 72 dots per inch (DPI). Anything bigger than 72 DPI can't be seen. So cropping, with these settings, is optimized for sending on the Internet.
For printing put in 8" x 10" by 200 DPI. Ink jet printers are 300 DPI. But with right paper this setting will do the job nicely.